Iran has formally asked Britain, France and Germany to reopen stalled talks on its nuclear programme, state news agencies have reported.

Iran's top nuclear official Ali Larijani has sent the countries' foreign ministers a letter "insisting on the necessity of negotiations", the official IRNA and the semi-official Mehr agencies reported.

Negotiations between Iran and the so-called EU-3 broke off in August when Iran resumed its uranium conversion programme in defiance of international calls to keep such activities frozen.

Larijani said in the letter that Iran would "welcome negotiations that are constructive and based on logic".

The letter is the first approach that Larijani has made to the EU-3 since taking over the nuclear dossier from the pragmatic cleric Hassan Rowhani after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad became president in June.

Seeing as the nuclear power station was being built some 28 years ago I don't see how it is now a problem, I didn't see any of us whinging about it when we were accepting money for the contracts we had to help build the place.